A Generic Library of Problem Solving Methods for Scheduling Applications

Rajpathak, Dr Dnyanesh and Motta, Prof Enrico and Zdrahal, Dr Zdenek and Roy, Prof Rajkumar (2006) A Generic Library of Problem Solving Methods for Scheduling Applications. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 18(6).

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In this paper we propose a generic library of problem-solving methods for scheduling applications. Although, some attempts have been made in the past at developing the libraries of scheduling problem-solvers, these only provide limited coverage. Many lack generality, as they subscribe to a particular scheduling domain. Others simply implement a particular problem-solving technique, which may be applicable only to a subset of the space of scheduling problems. In addition, most of these libraries fail to provide the required degree of depth and precision. In our approach we subscribe to the Task-Method-Domain-Application knowledge modeling framework which provides a structured organization for the different components of the library. At the task level, we construct a generic scheduling task ontology to formalize the space of scheduling problems. At the method level, we construct a generic problem-solving model of scheduling that generalizes from the variety of approaches to scheduling problem-solving, which can be found in the literature. The generic nature of this model is demonstrated by constructing seven methods for scheduling, as alternative specialization of the model. Finally, we validated our library on a number of applications to demonstrate its generic nature and effective support for developing scheduling applications.

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